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Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze

The Meaning Between Things

”A sculpture is constantly growing and dying at the same time. It is a parallel process of construction and deconstruction.” Meet contemporary artist Sarah Sze in her New York studio.

Everyday materials are the fundament of Sarah Sze’s work. Her installations transform a myriad of objects such waters bottles, tea bags, latters, lights balls, strings and paper cuts into installations, that in size vary between the intimate and enormous., the humble and the monumental. ”I use familiar materials, that are easily excessible, are mass produced, easily replaced and often have a throw-away-quality to them, so that they have no meaning and value anymore. But by putting them into connection with other similiar materials, they achieve the excact opposite and become unique and precoius.”

Because of their everyday quality, Sarah Sze scupltures resemble leftovers or traces of human behavior. ” How do you create intimacy in a place that is completely public? When you go and see one of my shows, you actually get the feeling you are in the studio. It has the rawness of a laboratory, where things are still going to happen. The object is the magnet that creates the experience and draws you in. What I am trying to do is to disburse that object, break it down, dislocate you within an object. It’s against the traditional idea of a sculpture as an isolated object.”

Sze's practice exists at the intersection of sculpture, painting and architecture. Her installations in private and public spaces profoundly affect the way the surrounding is viewed.
”I see my work as sculpture, because sculpture is when you deal with objects. My work is about the relationship between objects and how this creates meaning. In my understanding, meaning always arises between the objects, never within one object alone.”

Sarah Sze was born in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1991 she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Yale University with a BA. In 1997 she received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New. York. In 2013 Sze represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Sze today lives and works in New York City.

Sarah Sze was interviewed by Jesper Bundgaard in her New York studio. The featured work "Triple Point" in the video was Sze's contribution to the Venice Biennale in 2013.

Camera: Per Henriksen
Edited by: Per Henriksen
Produced by: Out of Sync and Marc-Christoph Wagner.
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

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